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It was the week after Greasy Johnson had turned eleven. As a belated birthday present, his parents were letting him spend all afternoon at the public aquarium.
In other words, the day had been going very well. Unfortunately, he was in the middle of admiring the tropical fish display — easily one of his favorite places in the world — when the door opened to admit his sworn enemies. The Them.
Adam was naturally at the center of the quartet, with Pepper, Wensley, and Brian clustered close around him. They were laughing, chattering, and jostling with all their usual enthusiasm: a group, a gang, together as always.
And Greasy was alone.
He muttered a word that would have made his grandmother frown.
His parents had dropped him off, knowing he could keep himself happy for a few hours. And he hadn’t invited the Johnsonites along. His friends were great in many ways, and Greasy could always — well, most of the time — count on them to have his back. Especially when it came time to butt heads (sometimes literally) with their neighborhood rivals.
Fish, though… fish were Greasy’s personal thing. Fish belonged to a different world than his friends. Fish were private. And the aquarium was somewhere he always went alone.
This time, however, as the Them strolled the rest of the way into the room, he was heartily wishing he hadn’t left his own gang at home.
Tense as he suddenly was, he saw the exact moment when Adam noticed him in return. Their eyes met, and as Greasy straightened away from the tank he’d been gazing into, the other four stopped walking. Pepper leaned over to whisper something in Adam’s ear; the other two almost immediately followed suit. Hissed conversation that Greasy couldn’t hear flew back and forth between them: all of them seemingly talking to or around Adam, presumably about Greasy.
They fell silent then, in a way that Greasy recognized from his own friends: they were awaiting a response, a direction, or a plan of action from their leader.
The silence seemed to last for an unusually prolonged moment.
And then Adam shrugged, said something briefly to the others, and continued his progress into the aquarium. The other three came in his wake, exchanging glances. When they were close to where Greasy stood, they paused again.
They stared at each other.
“Hi,” said Adam Young cheerfully, smiled, and gave a polite nod to his lifelong adversary. “Good day for seein’ the aquarium.”
And with that, he and his friends continued on, right on past Greasy, heading towards the dolphins without a single altercation.
Greasy gaped after them for a moment, completely baffled by this unheard-of friendliness. Seldom in all their time in Tadfield had such a peaceable interaction occurred between the local gang leaders.
But finally, he shrugged in his turn and looked back at the fish tank. If Adam was in the mood to be weird, that was his problem. Greasy wasn’t going to let it bother him.